Mountains & Valleys

December 22, 2012

MOUNTAIN - It's good to get good press from the big boys, and our area sure has been getting it lately. CNN included Lake Placid in "5 real-life wonderlands" on Dec. 3, CBC Radio One recently aired a 15-minute documentary on the story behind Saranac Lake's Community Store, and Swiss media are reporting on the late Rene Joyeuse, a Swiss-born World War II spy who became a doctor, spent his last 25 years in Saranac Lake and will be buried in Arlington. Plus, on Thursday we learned that the Associated Press has moved a glowing and lengthy travel feature on Lake Placid's Mirror Lake Inn. These reports give positive exposure of our area to millions of people, many of whom have likely never heard of these places before. We hope some of these folks will visit to see for themselves.

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VALLEY - ComLinks is finished, and it has left a void. Its many programs have been farmed out elsewhere, but much of the vast amount of charitable work it did just five years ago no longer exists. Our communities no longer have safe houses for domestic violence victims. Our food pantry customers no longer benefit from ComLinks' gleaning. We give our best wishes to those who have stepped up to cover what ComLinks once did, and we believe yet more people and groups will join them. Still, this situation makes it look like our area is at fault for failing to support this kind of work. That's not true. The downfall of this agency can mostly be blamed on one person - former ComLinks director Nancy Reich, who stole state funds from the agency to give richly to herself, and got away with only having to repay a small fraction of that, with no jail time. What a shame.

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MOUNTAIN - The Lake Placid/Wilmington Connecting Youth and Communities organization has started publishing a free, digital (PDF format), quarterly magazine called YC (for Youth Connections), in collaboration with the Youth Connections Coalition of Helena, Mont. YC is pretty remarkable: It looks fantastic, and it's loaded with good stuff to read, both local and general. It's well worth checking out, whether you're young or old. It's just one more positive contribution the caring local volunteers of CYC have made to local youths' well-being.

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VALLEY - We're sad to heard of the financial troubles faced by National Sports Academy in Lake Placid. We're glad they they have pulled together enough money to get through the end of the school year, though, and we wish them well amid this crisis.

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MOUNTAIN - We're thrilled that local biathlete Tim Burke is revving back up toward his 2009-10 form, with third- and fourth-place finishes in recent World Cup races in Slovakia. Biathlon is an awesome sport, and he and fellow local Lowell Bailey are among the best Americans ever to compete in it.